This presentation addresses the following 2011 Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA) Annual Conference themes, 1) information technology and international collaboration, 2) strategies of international partnerships and exchange, and 3) joint degrees and off-shore operations. It is based on growing efforts of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) to expand its OpenCourseWare (OCW) Web site to include material relevant to international students and teachers. It includes a description of the partnership between UCI and the Fundacão Getulio Vargas, Brazil (FGV) for the development of an international MBA program and the exchange and innovative use of open educational resources (OER) primarily in the form of OCW.
Internationalizing Learning Concepts through OCW. AIEA 2011
1. Internationalizing Learning Contexts through Open and Distance EducationLessons from Case Studies By Gary. W. Matkin, Ph.D., Dean Continuing Education, Distance Learning and Summer Session University of California, Irvine 2011 Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA) Annual Conference San Francisco, Calif. February 22, 2011
2. The International Impact of OCW on Institutional Reputation & Visibility Since its launch in 2002, MIT’s OCW has received108 million visits by 77 million visitors from virtually every country
7. UCI OCW is Republished on Other Open Sites Thereby Increasing Traffic
8. UCI’s OCW Web Site Attracts Viewers from Around the World Since its launch in November 2006, UCI’s OCW Web site has received 450,000 visits from 370,000 visitors 53% of 450,000 visits were from internationals, from 200 countries around the world
12. Openness is the Portal to Other Forms of International Interaction
13. For More OCW http://ocw.uci.edu/ http://www.ocwconsortium.org/ http://creativecommons.org/ http://www.facebook.com/pages/UC-Irvine-OpenCourseWare/ http://twitter.com/UCI_OCW
14. Gary W. Matkin, Ph.D. Dean, Continuing Education, Distance Learning and Summer Session University of California, Irvine Email: gmatkin@uci.edu Telephone: 949.824.8825 On the Web: http://ocw.uci.edu/ Download this Presentation at: http://www.slideshare.net/garymatkin/aeia
Editor's Notes
This presentation addresses the following conference themes, 1) information technology and international collaboration, 2) strategies of international partnerships and exchange, and 3) joint degrees and off-shore operations. It is based on growing efforts of the University of California, Irvine (UCI) to expand its OpenCourseWare (OCW) Web site to include material relevant to international students and teachers. It includes a description of the partnership between UCI and the Fundacão Getulio Vargas, Brazil (FGV) for the development of an international MBA program and the exchange and innovative use of open educational resources (OER) primarily in the form of OCW. To download this complete presentation, please visit: http://www.slideshare.net/garymatkin/aeia
A well developed OCW Web site has tremendous potential for showing the world the quality and extent of what an institution has to offer. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the founder of institutionalized OCW sites, averages over 1 million unique visits per month to its site, over 56% of which come from overseas. 58% of MIT faculty say that OCW has enhanced the reputation of their department. In addition, 82% of MIT faculty say that OCW is an important element of international engagement.
Following MIT’s initiative, which began in 2001, hundreds of institutions around the world have recognized the power of OCW and have not only joined the OpenCourseWareConsortium (OCWC) but have contributed to the growing store of open courses in many languages. Collectively, OCWC members have published materials from more than 13,000 courses in 20 languages.
Governments of several nations are recognizing the power of OER and OCW.The recent announcement by the Department of Education under the Obama administration regarding the massive funding for OCW to be delivered through the Community Colleges is clear evidence that the OCW movement has arrived on the scene. More importantly for international education, a number of developing nations and groups of nations are focusing on developing open, sharable educational resources. The African Virtual University (AVU) has achieved remarkable results from July 2007 to January 2010. Over its 13 years of existence, the AVU has trained more than 40,000 students, has established 53 centers in 27 countries, and has acquired the largest eLearning network in Africa. In Somalia, the AVU has graduated 4,000 students, 30% of whom are women. In April2006 the Japan OpenCourseWareConsortium (JOCW) was established to assist and disseminate the OCW activity, through the exchange of information among consortium members. Bythe end of 2010, JOCW universities had published 1,285 courses in Japanese and 212 courses in English. And finally, the Vietnam OCW has now developed over 1,000 open learning objects in the Vietnamese language.
Universities are discovering the value in promoting themselves and projecting positive images of their campuses and faculty members through a variety of methods, particularly with the large-scale sharing facilities as presented with iTunes and YouTube. Currently iTunes U offers well over 350,000 audio and video files from over 800 universities with iTunes U Web sites. iTunes U and You Tube (Education Channel) are intensely popular, including with those from overseas.
While there are many possible expressions of an institution’s commitment and ability to draw positive effects from openness, the establishment of an institutional open Web site is the most effective way of creating institutional value. Here is UC Irvine’s current OCW site which offers not only full courses (about 52 right now) but also course materials (learning objects smaller than full courses) video lectures, and its newest innovation— “collections” of open material arranged around specificeducational themes.
UC Irvine has a regular protocol for republishing material posted on the UCI OCW site to other open sites including YouTube Edu, iTunes U,Merlot, and Connexions. We also publish course links on Facebook, Twitter, and VideoLectures.net. This multiple site exposure increases search engine visibility,driving up coursetraffic to our site.
Similar to the MIT experience, UCI is drawing views to its OCW site from around the world.
Data gathered from Web Trends, tracking traffic from launch of site on November 30, 2006 through January 31, 2011.
UCI’s viewers from Brazil increased dramatically when we posted courses in Portuguese back in June 2008.
Through a partnership with Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV), a major institution of higher education in Brazil, we exchanged online courses, had them translated into Portuguese and then “localized” for the culture and pedagogy used in Brazil. This exchange and posting in both Brazil and at UCI was accompanied by huge volumes of course traffic and highly favorable press in Brazil. Note the different styles of course from oneinstitution to the other.
Forming partnerships with overseas institutions to serve deserving and overlapping audiences with OCW can be part of a rich multidimensional relationship with many aspects. For instance, since 2000, each summer approximately 100 FGV students have come to the UCI campus for a two week immersion program in U.S.business practices. Also, UCI and FGV have cooperated on an online certificate program in project management offered in a localized, Portuguese version. A total of 224 FGV students have completedthe Professional Sequence in Project Management, which consists of a minimum of 9.0 units (90 hours) in Project Management courses, each with a letter grade of “B” or better.